Title: How Well Do You Know Your American History?

 

Author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, and Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong -- Dr. James Loewen, has found out what!

 

 

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

 

High school students hate history. When they list their favorite subjects, history always comes in last. They consider it the most irrelevant' of twenty-one school subjects; bo-o-o-oring' is the adjective most often applied.

James Loewen spent two years at the Smithsonian Institute surveying twelve leading high school textbooks of American History. What he found was an embarrassing amalgam of bland optimism, blind patriotism, and misinformation pure and simple, weighing in at an average of four-and-a-half pounds and 888 pages.

In response, he has written Lies My Teacher Told Me, in part a telling critique of existing books but, more importantly, a wonderful retelling of American history as it should - and could - be taught to American students.

Beginning with pre-Columbian American history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the My Lai massacre, Loewen supplies the conflict, suspense, unresolved drama, and connection with current-day issues so appallingly missing from textbook accounts.

A treat to read and a serious critique of American education, Lies My Teacher Told Me is for anyone who has ever fallen asleep in history class.

 

 

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong is in its 22nd printing and continues to draw media attention and strong bookstore sales. It demonstrates how Americans get a distorted understanding of their past in their high school years.

Unfortunately, when they leave school, their miseducation continues. Lies Across America: What Our Historic Markers and Monuments Get Wrong shows how our shrines of public history suffer from the same kinds of omissions, distortions, and outright falsehoods that Lies My Teach Told Me found in American history textbooks.

Did you know that the automobile was invented in rural Wisconsin? That a Texas preacher beat the Wright brothers by a year, in a plane inspired by the word of God? That four different people in three different states "first" used anesthesia in an operation? That Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin in Kentucky built 30 years after his death?

Those things never happened, of course, but the landscape commemorates them anyway.

Did you know that the South seceded over states' rights? That Columbus proved the earth was round? That Indians massacred 295 westbound pioneers in Idaho?

Those things never happened, either, but the landscape commemorates them too.

Conversely, the landscape leaves out what DID happen. Four historic markers stand in downtown Scottsboro, Alabama -- yet none tells about the event that made Scottsboro famous around the world. Abraham Lincoln made a renowned visit to Richmond the day after it was liberated, yet he was not Confederate, so his actions go unmarked. In some states, markers and monuments completely omit women, even going so far as to convert mares into stallions!

Often, what markers and monuments and historic sites DO tell, they get wrong:

The Jefferson Memorial juxtaposes phrases to misrepresent what Jefferson said.

War museums prettify war.

Plaques put the name of the Spanish-American War on monuments carrying the dates of the much longer and more serious Philippines War.

Antebellum homes never mention slaves at all or call them "servants" and emphasize their happy lives.

A memorial fountain in Helena, Montana, is "A loving tribute to our Confederate Soldiers," but Montana never HAD any Confederate Soldiers -- in fact, Montana never had any UNION soldiers either, being still Indian country in 1861, as Gen. Custer found out to his sorrow in 1876.

There are even flat denials. President James Buchanan's historic house site denies that he was gay -- but he was. The Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial denies that Nebraska's most enduring writer was lesbian -- but she was. Fort Pillow, Tennessee, denies that Nathan Bedford Forrest's Confederates massacred surrendered U.S. troops there -- but they did. The National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum denies that mining today causes any environmental damage -- but it still does.
 

These misrepresentations on the American landscape help keep us ignorant as a people, less able to understand what really happened in the past, and less able to apply our understanding to issues facing the United States today.

Lies Across America teaches visitors to read between the lines of historical markers and to deconstruct the sculptures on monuments and memorials. Viewed in this way, the lies and omissions across the American countryside suggest times and ways that the United States went astray as a nation.

Included are a few sites that need no correction because they depict the past in all its complexity, even when it is embarrassing. The Shaw Memorial on Boston Common is one example, the Lincoln Memorial another.

So come along -- and see what you've been missing! The book covers more than a hundred historic sites in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It includes major sites like Valley Forge, the Jefferson Memorial, and Independence Hall. Readers may be shocked at what they didn't know about some of these places. It also includes far less well-known events, like the Louisiana site where more than 150 Republicans were executed in 1873.

General readers will enjoy Lies Across America because of its light touch while recommending it to other readers because of its important information